I wonder to what extent this exists in other languages?
The author of the linked article gives a
nice neat (though perhaps not intentional)
summary of why Java opts take on an
almost "urban legend"-like status:
First of all, microbenchmarks rarely measure
what you think they're measuring. In the
presence of dynamic compilation, you have
no idea what bytecode the JVM decides to
convert into native code or when, so you
can't really compare apples to apples.
In C, or just about any truly
compiled language, you most certainly
can measure the performance of
two different ways of doing something.
Then again, this counts as one of the
many factors in the C-vs-Java wars...
C programmers like determinism. Java
programmers like idiot-proofness. If you
need to factor in the amount of time it
takes to unload the gun in "point
at foot, pull trigger", you'll never
really get a good idea of how long it
takes to "shoot self in foot".;-)
And what right do YOU have to say that a
corporate entity (or any other entity for
that matter) should be destroyed simply
because you don't like it
Individially, none. With a large enough
group of people thinking similarly? We
have EVERY right to demand the revocation
of a corporate charter.
The idea of "incorporation" exists as a
convenient legal fiction for the sake
of allowing the government OF THE PEOPLE to
deal with a company.
If that company has abused that legal fiction,
not only not contributing to "the people" but
actually depriving them of something
they already had (in this case, variety in
radio broadcasting), we not only have a right,
but an obligation to terminate that
company's existance.
Or, to look at it another way, revocation of
a corporate charter means essentially applying
the death penalty to a company. Clearchannel
"killed" radio, so should itself receive
the death penalty as a punishment.
But since when, in a free society, are people
allowed to destroy someone's livelihood simply
because they don't agree with it?
Ever heard of payola? Y'know, that system of
semi-legal extortion by which radio stations
prevents artists without decently large budgets
from getting radio play, thus effectively
destroying their livelyhood because they don't
agree to get down on their knees for the
company?
How about Unions and/or guilds, whereby totally
compentent tradesmen can find themselves unable
to ply their trade because they didn't go through
the "right" system?
Ever heard of Iraq, where we recently destroyed
the livelyhood of the semi-democratically elected
leader of a sovereign nation because we didn't
agree with his politics?
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Plenty of examples of what you point out
exist, just looking at reasonably recent US
history.
And what right do YOU have
The first amendment. Perhaps currently
unpopular, but read it some time.
Clearchannel has singlehandedly destroyed
radio in the US. Five years ago, I had quite
a nice variety of stations to pick from,
with all twelve of my presets going to
something that, depending on my mood, I
would enjoy.
Now, I have two stations I listen to... A local
college station, and NPR. And I don't even
like NPR, but angry lesbians amuse me
more than the same top-10 pop songs played
over and over.
Clearchannel, as an "experiment" in media
conglomeration, should end. Revoke its
corporate charter, dissolve it, return control
and ownership to each individual station.
And more importantly, we need to IMMEDIATELY
stop further Borg-like activity on the part
of media megacorps.
I understand XviD's implementation of
MPEG-4 is based on H.263.
XviD follows the MPEG-4 ASP (advanced simple
profile) spec. Virtually all of the current
major video codecs out there use some minor
variant of this.
H.264 usually refers to the MPEG-4 AVC
(advanced video coding) profile. This
promises a 2-4x size improvement at
similar quality to the ASP. However,
it has one major problem...
So is anybody (including XviD) considering implementing it? I understand it isn't patent-encumbered. I could be wrong...
Yes, an
AVC implementation exists,
but it provides its own demonstration of why
no one uses it yet despite the improved
size and/or quality... Namely, 30-45 seconds
per frame at encode time. For a full-length
movie, that comes out to two or three
days for a single-pass encode.
Additionally, even if you feel inclined to wait
that long for the sake of quality (personally,
I would), the link I gave above points to
more of a proof of concept than a "real"
viable codec. It needs quite a lot of
tweaking just to make it compare to existing
ASP codecs such as XviD.
I've seen entirely too many articles (such
as recently appeared in SciAm, and now this
one appearing on/.'s FP) giving the
"10,000-foot view" of grid computing.
I've seen a few articles giving
the 10-micron view, describing CPU architectures
making use of a grid topology.
I've seen a few small demos of massively
distributed clusters. I've heard hype about
the idea of a service provider and service
consumer oriented topology. I've heard about
self-healing networks. I've heard about
the PS3 making use of a grid-based system.
I have not heard any of the "step 2s",
the means by which we transition from individual
PCs accessing a network, to a single shared
"grid computer" actually composed of the
network. At least, nothing that would make
the resulting network noticeably different than
the current internet.
For individual systems (ala the PS3), grid
computing seems like possibly the next big
thing, sort-of an evolution of SMP to a
scale larger than dual/quad CPU systems.
The rest of it, the over-hyped massive
"revolution" in how people use computing
resources in general? Pure marketing
hot-air, and nothing more. The closest
we'll get to the idea of a worldwide
"grid" will consist of an XBox-like home
media console with anything-on-demand (for
a fee).
If you want to fight against free sharing of copyrighted media
between archives, you better change the law first.
Kudos!
If I hadn't already posted on this topic, I'd mod
you up.
Good to see that some people still have the
ability to read and apply the law... Or rather, those
sections of the law that grant us rights rather
than only the ones taking away rights.
Thanks for the link.
Heh. Thinking about this, I find it somewhat
ironic... All the people who collect music from
the 'net but don't share their collections,
out of fear of attracting the RIAA's attention,
violate the law; but those who do share
should qualify as per the passage you quoted.
Whether you think it's wrong or not, at
least call it "music theft" which is what
it is. If you're so convinced it's right
then there's no need to sweep it under the
rug as "sharing", "freedom", "fair use" or
anything like that.
What word or words would you use to
describe the act of obtaining a book
from the library?
How about obtaining a CD or movie from
the library (many libraries have extensive
collections of CDs and movies, as well as
books)? Does the fact that this revised
situation involves music change your
definition?
Now, how does leaving out the "library" part
of the above picture, change the situation?
Does sharing something become "theft" because
individuals do it directly, rather than
through a public-ish organization?
Although I partially agree with you, that
people should call a spade a spade, not
all music "sharing" counts as a
euphemism for "stealing". As a better word,
considering how most people I
know use downloaded music, you might
want to consider the phrase "free
advertising".
And if "advertising" bothers you as yet
another euphemism for "piracy", perhaps
you can explain to me how Clearchannel
differs from your typical
pickpocket-on-the-street.
Also, if you're talking to your manager
about being "bent over" and using the term
"BS", you're not in the most professional
of atmospheres and might consider getting
out.
You haven't dealt with many "tech" managers,
have you?
In my entire career (roughly a decade
doing primarily firmware engineering
with an assortment of "normal" coding
as well) , I have had exactly two
managers with a clue.
One I consider really decent, he knew
what I did, and more importantly, he
knew what he didn't know and
wouldn't challenge me on decisions about
things he didn't know.
The other "knew C", and for the most
part stayed out of my way and let me
do my job. Incidentally, for any
management-types reading this,
you should aspire to meet this
description - At least know the
basics of what the people you "lead"
do, and if you can't literally do
their job for them, just leave them
the hell alone. Give 'em a project
and go back to your cube for a week.
All the rest (I'd say over a dozen)
believed that their pathetic little
MBA meant they knew more about how to
do my job than I did.
Put simply, PHBs really do exist,
and count as the majority (in my
experience) of managers.
Now, I don't mean to say they serve
no purpose - I don't claim to understand
the business world, so somebody
better know "step 2" of code -> ??? ->
profit. But when accountants give engineers
crap about purely tech-oriented
decisions, they need to ask themselves
"do I want the job done, or do I want to
prove my cluelessness to people who
already consider me of dubious
value to the ''team''?"
Incidentally, regarding tech support,
I have found it wanting for any real
usefulness, other than a false sense
of accountability for the PHBs. At my
previous job, we had a rather large
tech support contract with a company
that provided a particular embedded
OS to us, and when something went
wrong, guess who ended up solving
the problem? WE provided
THEM more bugfixes than they
provided us. No kidding or hyperbole
involved here. They would always respond
with "we'll look into it", and of course
since we needed the code working
"yesterday", we'd have to start working
on their bugs on our own. On two
occasions that I can remember, we
had to send an engineer to their
HQ to explain their own major architectural
flaws to them so they wouldn't continue
sending us "fixes" that re-broke what
we'd already worked around. Sad.
I wouldn't think it would deter downloaders
as much as it would potential P2P software
writers.
As a software engineer, this doesn't "deter" me, it
makes me seriously consider applying my knowledge
to the task of writing a better, secure,
totally anonymous P2P system. And while I
may currently lack the time to do much more
than "consider" such a task, someone else may
have already made considerable headway on
the same idea.
As an unsatisfied, irate, and now petulant, consumer,
I find the RIAA reprehensible. This "settlement" makes
me want to go out and pirate 1000 albums, which
at $17 each, adds up to no net gain for the RIAA
(yeah, I realize the real world doesn't work
like that, but I've used "their" math for this
one ). On the bright side, their legal fees
on this one most likely exceed their gain,
which means they've done nothing except
further annoy their potential customers.
As a member of a capitalistic economic
system, I see the RIAA as subsidized
obsolesence. If it insists on using
an outdated business model to sell
intangible "goods" based on artists
of dubious skill, let it. And let it
suffer the same fate as every other
group in history that stuck to tradition
in the face of radical change.
And finally, as a human, I see this as
nothing short of an all-out war between
naturally incorporated vs legally
incorporated entities. Thomas Jefferson
had the right idea, I just hope enough
people realize that corporate slavery
doesn't say much more about humanity
than racial slavery, before we end up
living in a completely Gibson-esque
world.
Re:Got a whole lotta hype
on
Brain Privacy
·
· Score: 1
A drug screen is meant to pick up
illegal activity which poses a tangible
safety and liability issue to a potential
employer.
Drug testing leaves open the possibility
of false positives, yet that seems to matter
little to those employers who use it. As
the most trivial example, poppyseed bagels
cause false positives for opiates (no, not
just an urban legend).
To address the "thought crimes" angle of
your comment, though, many jobs now require
applicants to take a simple "survey", which
asks such questions as "do you consider it
okay to steal from your employer". This
expresses nothing but an opinion, yet if
it the answer didn't matter, they wouldn't
ask. So does having a self-serving
personality, hating certain groups,
generally exhibiting a "take advantage
of anything within the letter of the law
attitude" commit any crimes? Nope. But it
may well keep some people from ever working again
if a potential employer can automatically
detect such personality traits.
The problem under consideration here
involves directly getting those answers
from your brain. If they can ask survey
questions such as I mentioned, why not
make such a survey easier and less prone
to people lying?
Which gets back to the problem of "but only
criminals will have to worry about the
answers". If you think new tech will
magically lack false positives, however,
I have a bridge to sell you.
And yes, just for clarification, I DO
feel very strongly against drug testing,
against personality testing, against
"measurement" of any aspect of a potential
employee not directly related to job
performance. With drug testing, those of
us actually having useful skills can
send a message by letting such employers
know exactly why we won't work for them
after wasting their time through three
rounds of interviews, forcing them to
start over at great expense. With
personality testing (at least in its
current form), anyone but a complete
moron can give the "right" answers.
With completely passive raping of our
brains for incriminating evidence that
an employer might not like? No, that
does NOT sound at all acceptible, and
while not currently a privacy issue,
most definitely a problem in the
future.
And let's not forget the same thing is
still going on, if maybe a bit more subtle.
More subtle?
Check out some of the anti-Afghani and
anti-Iraqi flash on Newgrounds. Watch the
South Park episode where Cartman hunts down
Osama. Watch any 5 minutes of SNL since
10/2001.
Nothing "subtle" about it. We still
have the EXACT same xenophobic (I won't
call it "racist", since racism only
provides the material, not the cause)
tendancies we did in WW-II. Not even
toned down. The only difference? Japan
and Germany have become "real" countries,
while Afghanistan and Iraq still exist
only for the convenience of US oil
interests.
If you need a reason not to censor
the foolishness of the past (or rather,
need a "better" reason than the abomination
of censorship itself, regardless of context),
there you have it. Modern kids seeing Bugs
make fun of the Japanese may cause them to ask
some uncomfortable questions, perhaps even
engage in a bit of easily-suppressed imitation.
But without seeing how "silly" it looks in
hindsight on a no-longer-unpopular group, no
one will recognize the exact same crap applied
to the newest unpopular-group-of-the-week.
Cultural heritage? Sure, it bothers me
to see cartoons I remember fondly end
up in tatters on the editing room floor.
But it terrifies me to see people
pretend we don't now, and never did, have
a fairly ingrained habit of bigotry. We
can work to fix what we recognize. We
can't fix what we don't see as a
problem.
How about toilet paper? Do any terrorists
use toilet paper? If so, will our GIs start
receiving the Sears catalog instead?
Don't leave out "all terrorists had (at least
temprarily heterosexual parents". Won't
THAT put a bug up the right wing's
collective butts...
Or how about "Most terrorists consider
themselves devoutly religious"?
And let's not forget how much help
cars provide terrorists. Hmm,
I planned to follow that with a joke
about Detroit, but more appropos, I'd
suggest the Japanese watch their backs
WRT the US for the same reason.;-)
The problem with the 4GB limit (and under
more realistic assumptions, 2GB) has little
to do with the maximum memory a system can
use.
The problem comes from how much memory a
single user-space process can use, which
on IA32, as I said above, comes out to
only 2GB, reliably.
As a simple example of why this matters,
let's say you have a system that needs
tons of memory, like for rendering
complex scenes or serving a huge database.
Each process will want as much RAM as possible,
but on IA32 (well, on any architecture,
but the current problem only really applies
to cheap-and-popular IA32), can only use
up to the addressable limit.
So you might think that you could use a
machine with 64GB for a number of slightly
smaller (but still memory-hungry) tasks.
The flaw with that idea? Get real. If
you need that much memory for one task,
you need to dedicate the machine to doing
that task. If you need to do rendering on
your huge DB server, you need to upgrade
BADLY
As another poster mentioned: It's very true that there are statistical differences between men and women, but the standard deviation is larger than
that difference. Meaning that it's ridiculous to form conclusions of ANY sort based on it. It's usefull as a statistical mean, and thats ALL it's usefull
for.
I will pretend you've taken a college-level
course in statistics and/or experimental
methods, and know what you just said.
While in many cases this "other poster" has
the right idea, in at least several areas,
they have it totally wrong.
The obvious example, "posession of a uterus".
For another, hemisphere-preferenciality of
linguistic tasks.
For a more simple example where your point fails,
THROWING OVERHANDED... Females have significantly
(which means, literally, a standard deviation
greater, by an amount dependant on sample size,
than the measured difference in means) less
speed, power, and accuracy in an overhanded
throw, than males do. Which brings up...
Muscle mass. Males have a significantly (again,
using the literal meaning of that word) higher
muscle-to-fat ratio than females.
As much as you may want to call us all
"the same", males differ from females. That
doesn't make males "better" than females...
In some aspects, females beat males. But in
other aspects, males outperform females. Like
it or not, this holds true.
Heh... I've "Ask Slashdot"'ted this
one myself (rejected, of course).
Personally, I agree with you 100%. Get
rid if the idea of "pagefiles" and "swap
partitions" completely, and enjoy the
performance boost resulting from the "loss".
As for the idea at hand (to make this at
least vaguely on-topic)...
How does this differ from a large RAM
disk cache, with slightly tweaked heuristics
for keeping something in cache (size, rather
than most-recently-read)?
To make a difference between men and women
WRT 3D user interface design is completely
idiotic. It is much smarter to make a
difference between people with high spatial
ability and low.
In your post, you keep confusing the term
"Politically correct" with "smarter". Please
avoid this error in the future.
Seriously, though... Would you also say
"To make a difference between men and
women WRT child-bearing is completely
idiotic. It is much smarter to make a
difference between people with wombs and
without"?
Sometimes, the overlap between your two
groups, and the two genders, (regardless
of how you phrase things), just comes out
too high to ignore. In such cases, it
seems *more* unethical to pretend no
gender difference exists, than to admit
"gee, men and women *don't* perform 100%
identically on all possible tasks".
When society realizes that males and females
each have their own strengths, we'll start
advancing noticeably faster. Until then, we'll
keep having suboptimal role-fillings because
everyone wants to pretend no differences
exist.
When the "pigs'" bill-of-rights doesn't
supercede my own rights, I'll give them
a fair chance.
Until then, they count as THE
ENEMY.
100% truthfully, I (and most of us) stand a
FAR better chance of dying at the hands of
a cop, whether by an accident or by so-called
"self defense" ("He had a realistic looking
rubber knife, I had to shoot him!")
than an Iraqi soldier and/or so-called
(unsubstantiated) "terrorist". Why should
we not fear and outright oppose the first
group, when we went to FUCKING WAR
against the second?
Sorry. Forgive my language. But really...
Think about it.
or because you believe laws represent
society's best effort to achieve a better
world?
Pretty much. I used to quite thoroughly
believe in anarchy, until I realized we'd
all end up killing each other.
What would you do to make the world a
better place? Or don't you care?
Ah, now there, you go to far.
I can have quite a lot of desire to
better the world, entirely in my own
self interest, without invoking any
imaginary friends.
I can even want the future to
look okay, for my possible genetic
descendants.
Personally, I do believe in a Creator,
as a logical consequence of my existance
(I did not (knowingly) create myself, so
what did? By which, I do not mean "my
parents").
But almost all of the results of so-called
"ethics", which I find generally means (in
Western societies) "what would Abraham's
god want", you can attain entirely as an
expression of long-term self-interest.
The environment? Well, I need to leave
a world for my kids to live in. The
economy? I don't want my kids to live
as paupers, or in the opposite case, I don't
want them put "up against the wall" in the
next (inevitable) revolution. Health?
I don't want to die of Chicken Pox, nor
do I want to die from nanites eating me
from the inside-out.
I expect everyone else to
act in their own best interest. Expecting
anything more sets you up for dissapointment.
Fortunately, the idea of "self interest"
includes, of necessity, some degree of
benevolence.
Seems to me if you restrict research,
not everybody will comply.
And in this case, no one will
comply who doesn't already.
Research (at least in the US) falls into
three categories - Academic, corporate,
and government.
The last two categories already release
VERY little of their findings. So this
idea of self-censorship only really
has any meaning on the first, academic
(and a VERY small amount of privately
funded non-profit) research.
But researchers in academia don't do it
just for the love of knowledge.
Many have contracts requiring
them to publish at least N times each
year, or have so little funding that
the need to publish to get government
or corporate grants (not quite the same
as purely government or corporate research).
So, despite the tendancy of people to
try to drag ethics into any topic where
it doesn't belong (ie, anywhere outside
a church), in this case, it seems academic
(forgive the pun). People will publish
because their jobs depend on it.
Honestly you would be better off disabling
those TCP simple services anyway. They're far
to easy to exploit into a local DOS attack by
just forging the packet headers.
I agree completely, and kicked myself when
I figured out what they had sent me the
warning for (I had actually left them open
purely by accident when I swapped out a
bad NIC and had to reinstall a new
driver).
Naturally they don't tell you *which*
services you have open, but I managed
to narrow it down in a number of phone
conversations along the lines of "NOW
have I complied?". I started with
telnet and FTP, figuring they'd care most
about that, but ended up having to close
all the basic TCP services down.
Overall, any of the "basic" TCP services
will get you the letter of death (not
kidding, I actually received one from
COX once upon a time for leaving the
"simple TCP services" open on an NT4
box).
More amusing, though, guess what
doesn't get you flagged as
running a "server"?
Any of the buggy-and-insecure-as-all-hell
Windows filesharing and messaging ports.
More practically, though, I don't get any
(official) scans on ports over 1k (on COX
or Adelphia, anyway), so you can run whatever
you want on a nonstandard high port.
Slashdot Mirror
The author of the linked article gives a nice neat (though perhaps not intentional) summary of why Java opts take on an almost "urban legend"-like status:
In C, or just about any truly compiled language, you most certainly can measure the performance of two different ways of doing something.
Then again, this counts as one of the many factors in the C-vs-Java wars... C programmers like determinism. Java programmers like idiot-proofness. If you need to factor in the amount of time it takes to unload the gun in "point at foot, pull trigger", you'll never really get a good idea of how long it takes to "shoot self in foot".
And what right do YOU have to say that a corporate entity (or any other entity for that matter) should be destroyed simply because you don't like it
Individially, none. With a large enough group of people thinking similarly? We have EVERY right to demand the revocation of a corporate charter.
The idea of "incorporation" exists as a convenient legal fiction for the sake of allowing the government OF THE PEOPLE to deal with a company.
If that company has abused that legal fiction, not only not contributing to "the people" but actually depriving them of something they already had (in this case, variety in radio broadcasting), we not only have a right, but an obligation to terminate that company's existance.
Or, to look at it another way, revocation of a corporate charter means essentially applying the death penalty to a company. Clearchannel "killed" radio, so should itself receive the death penalty as a punishment.
But since when, in a free society, are people allowed to destroy someone's livelihood simply because they don't agree with it?
Ever heard of payola? Y'know, that system of semi-legal extortion by which radio stations prevents artists without decently large budgets from getting radio play, thus effectively destroying their livelyhood because they don't agree to get down on their knees for the company?
How about Unions and/or guilds, whereby totally compentent tradesmen can find themselves unable to ply their trade because they didn't go through the "right" system?
Ever heard of Iraq, where we recently destroyed the livelyhood of the semi-democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation because we didn't agree with his politics?
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Plenty of examples of what you point out exist, just looking at reasonably recent US history.
And what right do YOU have
The first amendment. Perhaps currently unpopular, but read it some time.
Clearchannel has singlehandedly destroyed radio in the US. Five years ago, I had quite a nice variety of stations to pick from, with all twelve of my presets going to something that, depending on my mood, I would enjoy.
Now, I have two stations I listen to... A local college station, and NPR. And I don't even like NPR, but angry lesbians amuse me more than the same top-10 pop songs played over and over.
Clearchannel, as an "experiment" in media conglomeration, should end. Revoke its corporate charter, dissolve it, return control and ownership to each individual station. And more importantly, we need to IMMEDIATELY stop further Borg-like activity on the part of media megacorps.
I want decent independant radio back.
The defendants of this particular EMarketersAmerica suit also benefit from and endorse this fund.
...If we donate, do we get dividends from
the countersuit? ;-)
Just out of curiousity, considering the blatantly frivolous nature of this particular suit...
I understand XviD's implementation of MPEG-4 is based on H.263.
XviD follows the MPEG-4 ASP (advanced simple profile) spec. Virtually all of the current major video codecs out there use some minor variant of this.
H.264 usually refers to the MPEG-4 AVC (advanced video coding) profile. This promises a 2-4x size improvement at similar quality to the ASP. However, it has one major problem...
So is anybody (including XviD) considering implementing it? I understand it isn't patent-encumbered. I could be wrong...
Yes, an AVC implementation exists, but it provides its own demonstration of why no one uses it yet despite the improved size and/or quality... Namely, 30-45 seconds per frame at encode time. For a full-length movie, that comes out to two or three days for a single-pass encode.
Additionally, even if you feel inclined to wait that long for the sake of quality (personally, I would), the link I gave above points to more of a proof of concept than a "real" viable codec. It needs quite a lot of tweaking just to make it compare to existing ASP codecs such as XviD.
I've seen entirely too many articles (such as recently appeared in SciAm, and now this one appearing on /.'s FP) giving the
"10,000-foot view" of grid computing.
I've seen a few articles giving the 10-micron view, describing CPU architectures making use of a grid topology.
I've seen a few small demos of massively distributed clusters. I've heard hype about the idea of a service provider and service consumer oriented topology. I've heard about self-healing networks. I've heard about the PS3 making use of a grid-based system.
I have not heard any of the "step 2s", the means by which we transition from individual PCs accessing a network, to a single shared "grid computer" actually composed of the network. At least, nothing that would make the resulting network noticeably different than the current internet.
For individual systems (ala the PS3), grid computing seems like possibly the next big thing, sort-of an evolution of SMP to a scale larger than dual/quad CPU systems. The rest of it, the over-hyped massive "revolution" in how people use computing resources in general? Pure marketing hot-air, and nothing more. The closest we'll get to the idea of a worldwide "grid" will consist of an XBox-like home media console with anything-on-demand (for a fee).
If you want to fight against free sharing of copyrighted media between archives, you better change the law first.
Kudos!
If I hadn't already posted on this topic, I'd mod you up.
Good to see that some people still have the ability to read and apply the law... Or rather, those sections of the law that grant us rights rather than only the ones taking away rights.
Thanks for the link.
Heh. Thinking about this, I find it somewhat ironic... All the people who collect music from the 'net but don't share their collections, out of fear of attracting the RIAA's attention, violate the law; but those who do share should qualify as per the passage you quoted.
Whether you think it's wrong or not, at least call it "music theft" which is what it is. If you're so convinced it's right then there's no need to sweep it under the rug as "sharing", "freedom", "fair use" or anything like that.
What word or words would you use to describe the act of obtaining a book from the library?
How about obtaining a CD or movie from the library (many libraries have extensive collections of CDs and movies, as well as books)? Does the fact that this revised situation involves music change your definition?
Now, how does leaving out the "library" part of the above picture, change the situation? Does sharing something become "theft" because individuals do it directly, rather than through a public-ish organization?
Although I partially agree with you, that people should call a spade a spade, not all music "sharing" counts as a euphemism for "stealing". As a better word, considering how most people I know use downloaded music, you might want to consider the phrase "free advertising".
And if "advertising" bothers you as yet another euphemism for "piracy", perhaps you can explain to me how Clearchannel differs from your typical pickpocket-on-the-street.
Wow... Right on the first guess.
;-)
I didn't want to name names, but I'll admit it since you got it.
Also, if you're talking to your manager about being "bent over" and using the term "BS", you're not in the most professional of atmospheres and might consider getting out.
You haven't dealt with many "tech" managers, have you?
In my entire career (roughly a decade doing primarily firmware engineering with an assortment of "normal" coding as well) , I have had exactly two managers with a clue.
One I consider really decent, he knew what I did, and more importantly, he knew what he didn't know and wouldn't challenge me on decisions about things he didn't know.
The other "knew C", and for the most part stayed out of my way and let me do my job. Incidentally, for any management-types reading this, you should aspire to meet this description - At least know the basics of what the people you "lead" do, and if you can't literally do their job for them, just leave them the hell alone. Give 'em a project and go back to your cube for a week.
All the rest (I'd say over a dozen) believed that their pathetic little MBA meant they knew more about how to do my job than I did.
Put simply, PHBs really do exist, and count as the majority (in my experience) of managers.
Now, I don't mean to say they serve no purpose - I don't claim to understand the business world, so somebody better know "step 2" of code -> ??? -> profit. But when accountants give engineers crap about purely tech-oriented decisions, they need to ask themselves "do I want the job done, or do I want to prove my cluelessness to people who already consider me of dubious value to the ''team''?"
Incidentally, regarding tech support, I have found it wanting for any real usefulness, other than a false sense of accountability for the PHBs. At my previous job, we had a rather large tech support contract with a company that provided a particular embedded OS to us, and when something went wrong, guess who ended up solving the problem? WE provided THEM more bugfixes than they provided us. No kidding or hyperbole involved here. They would always respond with "we'll look into it", and of course since we needed the code working "yesterday", we'd have to start working on their bugs on our own. On two occasions that I can remember, we had to send an engineer to their HQ to explain their own major architectural flaws to them so they wouldn't continue sending us "fixes" that re-broke what we'd already worked around. Sad.
I wouldn't think it would deter downloaders as much as it would potential P2P software writers.
As a software engineer, this doesn't "deter" me, it makes me seriously consider applying my knowledge to the task of writing a better, secure, totally anonymous P2P system. And while I may currently lack the time to do much more than "consider" such a task, someone else may have already made considerable headway on the same idea.
As an unsatisfied, irate, and now petulant, consumer, I find the RIAA reprehensible. This "settlement" makes me want to go out and pirate 1000 albums, which at $17 each, adds up to no net gain for the RIAA (yeah, I realize the real world doesn't work like that, but I've used "their" math for this one ). On the bright side, their legal fees on this one most likely exceed their gain, which means they've done nothing except further annoy their potential customers.
As a member of a capitalistic economic system, I see the RIAA as subsidized obsolesence. If it insists on using an outdated business model to sell intangible "goods" based on artists of dubious skill, let it. And let it suffer the same fate as every other group in history that stuck to tradition in the face of radical change.
And finally, as a human, I see this as nothing short of an all-out war between naturally incorporated vs legally incorporated entities. Thomas Jefferson had the right idea, I just hope enough people realize that corporate slavery doesn't say much more about humanity than racial slavery, before we end up living in a completely Gibson-esque world.
A drug screen is meant to pick up illegal activity which poses a tangible safety and liability issue to a potential employer.
Drug testing leaves open the possibility of false positives, yet that seems to matter little to those employers who use it. As the most trivial example, poppyseed bagels cause false positives for opiates (no, not just an urban legend).
To address the "thought crimes" angle of your comment, though, many jobs now require applicants to take a simple "survey", which asks such questions as "do you consider it okay to steal from your employer". This expresses nothing but an opinion, yet if it the answer didn't matter, they wouldn't ask. So does having a self-serving personality, hating certain groups, generally exhibiting a "take advantage of anything within the letter of the law attitude" commit any crimes? Nope. But it may well keep some people from ever working again if a potential employer can automatically detect such personality traits.
The problem under consideration here involves directly getting those answers from your brain. If they can ask survey questions such as I mentioned, why not make such a survey easier and less prone to people lying?
Which gets back to the problem of "but only criminals will have to worry about the answers". If you think new tech will magically lack false positives, however, I have a bridge to sell you.
And yes, just for clarification, I DO feel very strongly against drug testing, against personality testing, against "measurement" of any aspect of a potential employee not directly related to job performance. With drug testing, those of us actually having useful skills can send a message by letting such employers know exactly why we won't work for them after wasting their time through three rounds of interviews, forcing them to start over at great expense. With personality testing (at least in its current form), anyone but a complete moron can give the "right" answers. With completely passive raping of our brains for incriminating evidence that an employer might not like? No, that does NOT sound at all acceptible, and while not currently a privacy issue, most definitely a problem in the future.
And let's not forget the same thing is still going on, if maybe a bit more subtle.
More subtle?
Check out some of the anti-Afghani and anti-Iraqi flash on Newgrounds. Watch the South Park episode where Cartman hunts down Osama. Watch any 5 minutes of SNL since 10/2001.
Nothing "subtle" about it. We still have the EXACT same xenophobic (I won't call it "racist", since racism only provides the material, not the cause) tendancies we did in WW-II. Not even toned down. The only difference? Japan and Germany have become "real" countries, while Afghanistan and Iraq still exist only for the convenience of US oil interests.
If you need a reason not to censor the foolishness of the past (or rather, need a "better" reason than the abomination of censorship itself, regardless of context), there you have it. Modern kids seeing Bugs make fun of the Japanese may cause them to ask some uncomfortable questions, perhaps even engage in a bit of easily-suppressed imitation. But without seeing how "silly" it looks in hindsight on a no-longer-unpopular group, no one will recognize the exact same crap applied to the newest unpopular-group-of-the-week.
Cultural heritage? Sure, it bothers me to see cartoons I remember fondly end up in tatters on the editing room floor. But it terrifies me to see people pretend we don't now, and never did, have a fairly ingrained habit of bigotry. We can work to fix what we recognize. We can't fix what we don't see as a problem.
How about toilet paper? Do any terrorists use toilet paper? If so, will our GIs start receiving the Sears catalog instead?
;-)
Don't leave out "all terrorists had (at least temprarily heterosexual parents". Won't THAT put a bug up the right wing's collective butts...
Or how about "Most terrorists consider themselves devoutly religious"?
And let's not forget how much help cars provide terrorists. Hmm, I planned to follow that with a joke about Detroit, but more appropos, I'd suggest the Japanese watch their backs WRT the US for the same reason.
The problem with the 4GB limit (and under more realistic assumptions, 2GB) has little to do with the maximum memory a system can use.
The problem comes from how much memory a single user-space process can use, which on IA32, as I said above, comes out to only 2GB, reliably.
As a simple example of why this matters, let's say you have a system that needs tons of memory, like for rendering complex scenes or serving a huge database. Each process will want as much RAM as possible, but on IA32 (well, on any architecture, but the current problem only really applies to cheap-and-popular IA32), can only use up to the addressable limit.
So you might think that you could use a machine with 64GB for a number of slightly smaller (but still memory-hungry) tasks. The flaw with that idea? Get real. If you need that much memory for one task, you need to dedicate the machine to doing that task. If you need to do rendering on your huge DB server, you need to upgrade BADLY
As another poster mentioned: It's very true that there are statistical differences between men and women, but the standard deviation is larger than that difference. Meaning that it's ridiculous to form conclusions of ANY sort based on it. It's usefull as a statistical mean, and thats ALL it's usefull for.
I will pretend you've taken a college-level course in statistics and/or experimental methods, and know what you just said.
While in many cases this "other poster" has the right idea, in at least several areas, they have it totally wrong.
The obvious example, "posession of a uterus".
For another, hemisphere-preferenciality of linguistic tasks.
For a more simple example where your point fails, THROWING OVERHANDED... Females have significantly (which means, literally, a standard deviation greater, by an amount dependant on sample size, than the measured difference in means) less speed, power, and accuracy in an overhanded throw, than males do. Which brings up...
Muscle mass. Males have a significantly (again, using the literal meaning of that word) higher muscle-to-fat ratio than females.
As much as you may want to call us all "the same", males differ from females. That doesn't make males "better" than females... In some aspects, females beat males. But in other aspects, males outperform females. Like it or not, this holds true.
Heh... I've "Ask Slashdot"'ted this one myself (rejected, of course).
Personally, I agree with you 100%. Get rid if the idea of "pagefiles" and "swap partitions" completely, and enjoy the performance boost resulting from the "loss".
As for the idea at hand (to make this at least vaguely on-topic)...
How does this differ from a large RAM disk cache, with slightly tweaked heuristics for keeping something in cache (size, rather than most-recently-read)?
To make a difference between men and women WRT 3D user interface design is completely idiotic. It is much smarter to make a difference between people with high spatial ability and low.
In your post, you keep confusing the term "Politically correct" with "smarter". Please avoid this error in the future.
Seriously, though... Would you also say "To make a difference between men and women WRT child-bearing is completely idiotic. It is much smarter to make a difference between people with wombs and without"?
Sometimes, the overlap between your two groups, and the two genders, (regardless of how you phrase things), just comes out too high to ignore. In such cases, it seems *more* unethical to pretend no gender difference exists, than to admit "gee, men and women *don't* perform 100% identically on all possible tasks".
When society realizes that males and females each have their own strengths, we'll start advancing noticeably faster. Until then, we'll keep having suboptimal role-fillings because everyone wants to pretend no differences exist.
i agree on all counts
;-)
Um... Dude? You need some help.
SIX layers of responding to yourself just can't do you any good.
Though I have to admit, you have a certain undeniable style.
Shut up. You are free to do whatever you choose
Heh.
This quote nicely stands on its own, and makes your opponent's point without his even bothering to respond.
Very considerate of you, IMO.
When the "pigs'" bill-of-rights doesn't supercede my own rights, I'll give them a fair chance.
Until then, they count as THE ENEMY.
100% truthfully, I (and most of us) stand a FAR better chance of dying at the hands of a cop, whether by an accident or by so-called "self defense" ("He had a realistic looking rubber knife, I had to shoot him!") than an Iraqi soldier and/or so-called (unsubstantiated) "terrorist". Why should we not fear and outright oppose the first group, when we went to FUCKING WAR against the second?
Sorry. Forgive my language. But really... Think about it.
or because you believe laws represent society's best effort to achieve a better world?
Pretty much. I used to quite thoroughly believe in anarchy, until I realized we'd all end up killing each other.
What would you do to make the world a better place? Or don't you care?
Ah, now there, you go to far.
I can have quite a lot of desire to better the world, entirely in my own self interest, without invoking any imaginary friends.
I can even want the future to look okay, for my possible genetic descendants.
Personally, I do believe in a Creator, as a logical consequence of my existance (I did not (knowingly) create myself, so what did? By which, I do not mean "my parents").
But almost all of the results of so-called "ethics", which I find generally means (in Western societies) "what would Abraham's god want", you can attain entirely as an expression of long-term self-interest.
The environment? Well, I need to leave a world for my kids to live in. The economy? I don't want my kids to live as paupers, or in the opposite case, I don't want them put "up against the wall" in the next (inevitable) revolution. Health? I don't want to die of Chicken Pox, nor do I want to die from nanites eating me from the inside-out.
I expect everyone else to act in their own best interest. Expecting anything more sets you up for dissapointment. Fortunately, the idea of "self interest" includes, of necessity, some degree of benevolence.
Seems to me if you restrict research, not everybody will comply.
And in this case, no one will comply who doesn't already.
Research (at least in the US) falls into three categories - Academic, corporate, and government.
The last two categories already release VERY little of their findings. So this idea of self-censorship only really has any meaning on the first, academic (and a VERY small amount of privately funded non-profit) research.
But researchers in academia don't do it just for the love of knowledge. Many have contracts requiring them to publish at least N times each year, or have so little funding that the need to publish to get government or corporate grants (not quite the same as purely government or corporate research).
So, despite the tendancy of people to try to drag ethics into any topic where it doesn't belong (ie, anywhere outside a church), in this case, it seems academic (forgive the pun). People will publish because their jobs depend on it.
Honestly you would be better off disabling those TCP simple services anyway. They're far to easy to exploit into a local DOS attack by just forging the packet headers.
I agree completely, and kicked myself when I figured out what they had sent me the warning for (I had actually left them open purely by accident when I swapped out a bad NIC and had to reinstall a new driver).
Naturally they don't tell you *which* services you have open, but I managed to narrow it down in a number of phone conversations along the lines of "NOW have I complied?". I started with telnet and FTP, figuring they'd care most about that, but ended up having to close all the basic TCP services down.
I mean, what qualifies as a server?
You want the real answer?
Echo. Daytime. Chargen. Telnet.
Overall, any of the "basic" TCP services will get you the letter of death (not kidding, I actually received one from COX once upon a time for leaving the "simple TCP services" open on an NT4 box).
More amusing, though, guess what doesn't get you flagged as running a "server"?
Any of the buggy-and-insecure-as-all-hell Windows filesharing and messaging ports.
More practically, though, I don't get any (official) scans on ports over 1k (on COX or Adelphia, anyway), so you can run whatever you want on a nonstandard high port.